The Free Gaza Movement ship, "SPIRIT OF HUMANITY," left Larnaca Port at 3:00 pm, Monday, 12 January, on an emergency mission to besieged Gaza. It is expected to arrive in Gaza at approximately 11am (UST) Tuesday morning. Aboard the ship are 36 passengers and crew, representing 17 different nations. They are doctors, journalists, human rights workers, and five European parliamentarians representing Belgium, Greece, Italy, and Spain (see below for a complete passenger list). The mercy ship also carries desperately needed medical supplies meant for hospitals in the Gaza Strip.Gullible editors will read this and think that Free Gaza is trying to help deliver medical aid to Gazans that is being blocked by Israel.
The truth is the exact opposite. Free Gaza is a group of people dedicated to destroying Israel. Free Gaza is against nations delivering humanitarian aid to Gazans! They have written in their own emails:
Although humanitarian aid is very much needed, especially now in Gaza, focusing on humanitarian efforts alone is a form of complicity in Israel's malevolent quest to destroy the Palestinian people.And this:
Free Gaza is neither a "protest group" nor an aid agency. Our mission and our work are political. We are a Palestinian and international effort dedicated to the principle of non-violent direct action. We are engaged in active, civil resistance against the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the violence this occupation uses to sustain itself.And just in case you think that they only define "resistance" as non-violent, here is how they describe Qassam rockets aimed at Israeli kindergartens:
Do you know my dear reader how many Israelis were killed by Palestinians resistance rockets?Israel has so far delivered 230 tons of medical equipment plus ambulances via the Red Cross in Gaza and about 300 more tons via the World Health Organization and UNICEF, not to mention many hundreds of tons of food and medical supplies donated by Turkey, Jordan, Greece and Egypt. If the Free Gaza people cared about delivering medicine, they could have sent it through Israel yesterday.
The Free Gaza boat is not meant to make a dent in the medical situation in Gaza, it is meant purely to make Israel look bad. To that end, they write in their email:
Once we set sail, we do not plan on turning back. We will stay at sea, insisting on access to Gaza, until we succeed or Israel gravely attacks or arrests us.Since Israel has already informed them that they will not be allowed to dock in Gaza, they are deliberately putting on a theatre to force a showdown and gain more press.
And have no doubt, the press is complicit in making Free Gaza look like a humanitarian organization rather than a PR wing of Hamas that tells its members that now is the time for a "third intifada."
In fact, this so-called "mercy ship" has 6 doctors, 7 "human rights workers" - and 17 journalists, including reporters from CNN, Sky TV, the BBC, the Sunday Herald (UK), Mega TV and France's Channel 2. The reporters know that Israel will not allow the boat through and that makes a good, manufactured story.
Not that the presence of reporters will stop the Free Gaza terror-supporters from lying even more egregiously, as they falsely claimed last time that a half dozen Israeli ships fired upon them with live ammunition and still cannot produce a single video that verifies their claim that Israeli boats rammed them three times "without warning."
The media should not allow these clowns to manufacture "news" and to brazenly lie about this so called "mercy ship."